I'm sure that many of you know that for the past 6 years or so, a group of dedicated forum members have been working on what for the longest time was known as the Shining Force 2 Community Project.

To cut a long story short, it was originally intended to be a hack of Shining Force 2, but in the time since we started, various events have revealed that we could not trust SEGA not to shut down the project if they ever got wind of it, and so we've been repurposing the project to have its own identity for a long time. The problem was, we didn't have an engine to repurpose to. For a while we had numerous possibilities, including Blu Drgn's SFPC engine, and Zexr0's engine (RIP, Zexr0.), but for a lot of the time, the future of the project has looked pretty bleak; despite all of our hard work on sprites, portraits, story, organisation, planning and ideas, lack of engine has always been our achilles heel. It has certainly had its effects on the team's morale.

On 4th March of this year, that changed, when a newbie signed up with talk of an engine. Considering the track record of virtually all SF-based fan projects, I followed my curiosity moreso to humour him, having nothing really to lose at this stage.

'Pleasantly surprised' doesn't cut it. Over the past 2 months, I have been working with the engine designer - Broked - and we have put together something that marks our first real breakthrough in bringing Legacies of Veridocia one step closer to being a reality.

I know it's tempting to just jump in and play, but you might want to read the following quick start guide whilst you wait for the download.

Readme wrote:---Additional Files---If you have any problems running the demo, you may need to install the current version of Java. If you still run into problems after doing this, post your issues and bug reports in as much detail as you can in this thread. Don't forget to include your system information.

---Controls---Arrow Keys to move.A,S, D are equivalent to A, B, and C on a Mega Drive/Genesis controller, though A doesn't do much. S is the cancel button. D is your confirm button. In-battle Stat Sheets are viewable using D.F7 toggles between Full Screen and Windowed modes.Enter brings up the command console, but you shouldn't need that. (I may release a few Console Codes if there is enough demand for them. There are one or two secrets and cheats to play with.)

---Demo Details---The Demo consists of a Story Scene, a battle, and a post-battle story scene, followed by a basic free roam of the map (there's not much there right now). Once you've played through to the free roam, you can reinitiate the battle as many times as desired by walking into the area where the characters begin the battle.

It's important to note that not all functions are implemented within battle yet. Some of these include:- Double Attacks- Counters- Level Gains (a randomised proxy is used currently)- Equipping/Unequipping weapons- Giving Items- Heal Level 2 (Sharna learns it, but casting it may crash the demo)

---What's Next?---The next phase will involve further developing the battle system and implementing more of its mechanics, whilst the spriters produce the additional assets needed to continue work on the first chapter. We will also need a team of dedicated mappers, who will need training in how to set the maps up for the engine to read.

We hope you enjoy the demo. It's been a long time coming.

If you're not currently involved in the project, but would like to be, feel free to request access to the Community Project group by PMing either myself or MXC.

Whyever Broked decided not to post outside of PMs after his first post I hope he still reads what's going on here - Thanks a lot! I like a lot of what I saw so far and for a pre-alpha build, it's just plain great. Holding any criticism for the moment, most stuff I'd like to point out is probably due to it being a very early build anyways.

What I especially like, though, are the out of battle animations. They already look very SFII and little details like the character shadows is stuff that doesn't get in the way of a 'retro feel' but that looks really nice.

I can't overstate how impressed I am with the progress of this project. Sure, there are glitches here are there where effects won't show up, or enemies will suddenly jump from point A to point B, where battle text doesn't stop and skips..but it's phenomenal.

I'm excited to see this progress and grow. Oozes with swords, man. It's amazing. Play this. If you have the neccesary skills, consider contributing. Fantastic work guys. Keep it up!

I'll try and run through it again to single them out, but it'll probably be hard to capture them. The glitches are things moving at a very fast pace..unless the battle effects are supposed to be longer, then it might just be an FPS problem.

I'd have to capture video for the specific things to show up, and I'm not really sure of an easy way to do that without dropping frames. It's meant to run at 60+, right?

I had just downloaded it and got into the battle when my Father came to my apartment for a quick visit. He used to play Shining Force back in the day a bit and he asked me what I was playing, so I told him it was the playable demo to the game Al and I did some work for. I've told him a bit about it here and there over the years. I played more of it in front of him and he liked what he saw. He said he'd check it out more when he got home. So, from an older old school SF fan, he gave a thumbs up. Fresh to the whole thing, never seeing any of our project before, he was really impressed. He's in his late 50s and he thought it was pretty kick ass. He's quite tech savvy, he's not your stereotypical older fella. He's been on the forefront of technology since I was a tot. First to have a DVR (not that lame ass TiVo shit either) and first to get all sorts of cool things. He had everything connecting with USB before USB became the main thing.

Anyhow, yeah. Positive reviews from him. And from me natch

Just doing some quick bug testing... When Noah is defeated the game says "You have been defeated." and then closes out. I hope this isn't intended. It should at least revert to main screen.